Steven Agard's “Perimeter 0346
Mary Berryman Agard and her husband, Steve, moved across from Brittingham Park in 1976 for one reason. “We have interracial children, and we came here because of the Bayview neighborhood,” says Mary, referring to what’s also known as “the Triangle,” the ethnically diverse area bordered by Park Street, West Washington Avenue and Regent Street.
But the park, which sits on the banks of Monona Bay, was also a major plus. A city beach, staffed with lifeguards, was just down the block from the Agards’ house, and the water was clean and inviting.
“We used the beach constantly,” she recalls. “The floors of my house were like sand dunes.”
She says children from Longfellow School on South Brooks Street, which was then still open, often used the park and beach. “You didn’t worry that your kids were in Brittingham Park,” she recalls. “A lot of the children’s social lives happened in the park. Hanging with friends, boating, swimming, fishing.”
Agard and her husband (whose art appears on this week’s cover) also socialized in the park, hosting a weekly Wednesday night gathering of friends in the warmer months. “The one requirement is that you had to bring somebody we didn’t know.”
But by the 1990s, the water quality of the lake had declined, and fewer people were heading to the park to swim. The city subsequently closed the beach due to limited use. Meanwhile, unsavory behavior in the park increased, including gambling, drinking, prostitution and fighting. Panhandling was common, and women were harassed, says Agard. The park was dangerous at night, particularly for girls and women.
By mid-2000, city park staff were discouraging users from renting the park pavilion, which had turned into a de facto homeless shelter for dozens of men. By the time a transgender woman was found dead in the park in July 2007 from complications of alcohol abuse, neighbors had come together under the umbrella of a new group, the Monona Bay Neighborhood Association. “Our position was that our beef was not with homelessness. It was with illegal and antisocial behavior in the park,” says Agard, the association’s first president.
The police identified “frequent fliers” who were involved repeatedly in illegal behavior. Some were mentally ill; others were substance abusers. Porchlight, which provides housing and supportive services for homeless individuals, was tapped to bring additional help. Alcohol was banned from the park, surveillance cameras were installed, and police started patrolling regularly to remove chronic loiterers.
Some advocates criticized the efforts for not focusing more on the root causes of homelessness, but ultimately reclamation efforts focused not so much on driving people from the park but inviting them back. Says Agard: “The police took the position that having more affirmative bookings in the shelter was the greatest thing that could be done to increase safety.”
Judith Davidoff
From left: Andrew Baker, Molly Spoerl and Lawrence Sullivan find a quiet spot along Monona Bay on an unusually warm April afternoon.
Is there anything more chill than piling into a hammock and staring at a lake?
“I had a vision for us today,” says Molly Spoerl, who along with Andrew Baker and Lawrence Sullivan, shopped for food at the farmers’ market before setting up two lightweight hammocks at Brittingham Park on April 16, one of the glorious 70-degree days of this past weekend. The three, all sophomores at UW, live about 10 minutes from the park.
None knew anything about the park’s past troubles. “I’ve never thought about it as anything other than nice,” says Baker, who often runs through the park as well.
Neither did Zach Dyer, 23, or Zach Daniels, 23, who headed to the park in the morning with four other friends they know from Epic, where they work, to play pickup volleyball at the sand courts.
“I really like that it’s off the lake,” says Dyer of the park. Both say they’ve never felt unsafe in the park.
The volleyball courts are located at the western edge of the park, just before the bike path empties out onto West Shore Drive and approximately a few hundred yards from the park shelter. Installation of the courts was driven by the Monona Bay Neighborhood Association, which also rallied for soccer fields.
Today there are a couple of men hanging out on the tables inside the shelter; another is sleeping on the ground by a table just off to the side.
Families with young children are all over the park, including one group with a woman in a long silk sari. People are fishing, playing football and Frisbee, sun-bathing, walking dogs and biking.
Judith Davidoff
Graduate student Taylor Cole Miller digs a compost trench in his garden plot.
Mee Xiong
Mee Xiong plants the garden’s flower border, which doubles as pollinator habitat.
Taylor Cole Miller is one of two gardeners working at the community garden plot, located to the east of the soccer and Frisbee fields, just before the park curves around to parallel South Brittingham Place. A graduate student at UW-Madison, Miller lives about a quarter-mile from the park. He put his name on the waiting when the garden launched in 2013, and was thrilled when he made the cut last year.
Freedom Inc., a nonprofit group that serves Hmong refugees who live in subsidized housing across West Washington, spearheaded the garden. Some neighborhood residents opposed the idea, fearing the garden plots would be unkempt and unsightly; others simply did not like the idea of cutting up public green space. But neighborhood police officer Kimberly Alan says the garden has been a wholly positive addition, bringing diverse people together in the process.
Shelly Strom
Hmong elders Naochee Xiong (left) and Washoua Lor install a perimeter fence at the gardens.
“The people using raised beds tend to be disabled folks from the CDA building across the street,” says Alan. “You also have a lot of [Hmong] elders and families from Bayview and folks from the Brittingham neighborhood and around Monona Bay.”
Alan says the Hmong elders, in particular, also do small maintenance jobs around the park and keep an eye on potential problems. “That garden has provided a whole lot of natural surveillance for us,” she adds.
Miller says he still sees homeless people sleeping in the pavilion and did lose some pumpkins to theft last year. But problems are few. He points to the now barren strip just on the other side of a temporary fence, noting it will soon be planted with a border of flowers.
“People who garden out here love it,” he says. “They put their heart and soul into making things pretty.”
There's more to the story! See Related Links below for more on the Brittingham Park renaissance.
